Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Stone- Woi'ship. 223
was the
Fal, by some strangely enough identified with the
Coronation Stone brought by King Edward from Scotland
to Westminster Abbey. Arbois de Jubainville gives this
account of it :
Conn Cetchathach, chief King of Ireland, in
the second
century, accidentally put his foot on a magical stone called
Fdl, which had been brought to Ireland by the Tuatha de
Danann. It cried out, so that all in Tara heard it. Three
Druids present were asked what the cry meant, where the
stone came from, whither it would go, and who had brought
it to Tara } They asked a delay of fifty-three days, when
they answered all but the first question. They could only
say that the stone had prophesied. The number of its
cries was the number of the kings of the royal race, but
the Druids could not tell their names. Lug then appears
to them, takes Conn to his palace, and prophesies to him
the length of his reign, and the names of his successors.
A number of idle legends are attached to the Fdl stone.
As late as 1649, Commissioners were appointed by the
Scottish General Assembly to dispel the popular superstitions
respecting sacred stones. In Ireland the superstitious
observances had a longer possession of people's
minds.
As circles are known in Icelandic as donih-ringr, or
doom rings of Judgment, it has been suggested that
Stonehenge itself may have been a chief Seat of Judgment
Avith the foreign colony, whose capital on Salisbury Plain
may have been Sorbiodunum, afterwards Sarum.
Clemens Alexandrinus spoke of stones as images of
God. Aurelius Antoninus brought to Rome a black stone,
and paid homage to it. The Laplanders, until lately,
sacrificed the reindeer to a stone. Lactantius records the
worship of Terminus in the form of a stone. Damascius
mentions consecrated stones in Syria. Black stones are